Tuesday, 11 May 2010

Note to self, blog books as they come in otherwise they mount up! Damn. Here's what's new over the past few weeks below, all the way up until today. I've not covered everything that's new, consider these edited highlights. I'll be adding quite a lot of these books to the online shop shortly but feel free to email me if you want to sort out a purchase before then given that some of the books are in very limited number!

First up, NAPA books all the way from Helsinki, Finland! I've had my eye on these for a long time and I'm deelighted they've finally hit Good Grief!

"How you should make cement for mending stones" by Jaakko Pallasvuo. Non-more classic black and white illustrations taken from Pallasvuo's previous zines as well as unreleased all-new material. 120 pages of inky texturiffic pleasingness. £10

"My Dream Furniture" postcard book. Large format square black and white postcards from 8 artists (each artist has 3 postcards) with a theme of their dream furniture. The findings are funny. Artists include Terhi Ekebom, Jussi Karjalainen, Pauliina Mäkelä, Kati Rapia, Aapo Rapi, Jenni Rope, Kasper Strömman and Nene Tsuboi. The best postcard book I've seen in ages, I couldn't bring myself to tear out any of the cards but maybe you're made of stronger stuff. £8

"Something for the weekend" by Jenni Rope. Glorious children's picture book format with rounded edge pages on thick cardboard stock. Watercolour abstract illustrations by the supreme Jenni Rope with accompanying words/poetry. In Finnish and English texts. A dream. £14

Napa books. Done. Come in and experience how artfully made and contented each one is, pictures on here don't do justice but the pictures inside the books definitely do! Check it out below, second postbag received from Noah Lyon's RETARD RIOT, New York...

Badges this time, not zines. The shop had 30 assorted badges originally, we're down to about 22 now. Check the picture above for some of the laughs on show. Noah makes hundreds of designs and these small pin badges can be found in the likes of the Museum of Modern Art and the Whitney Museum! Yep, slogans such as "Fart Fart Fart" and "Sports Team #1" are officially legit, but we knew that anyway. £1 each

Speaking of secondcomings at Good Grief! We have a new batch from our favourite Canadian publishing house, Koyama Press! Below are all the new titles, and some returning champions...

"Pobody's Nurfect" by Wowee Zonk. Best title and author combo of the week award winner. A small but jam-packed book of three-piece illustracollective Wowee Zonk's work. Delicate paintings, cartoon stylings, innovative collage and a blenderised mash of all three. Very hot. £7

"Milky Way Shuffle" by Elio. Funnily drawn and worded (and the way Elio's drawn the faces as they're talking!) comic about a party gatecrashing nerd that becomes the toast of the party under "unidentified" circumstances. Lovely lil landscape format, each book has an original sketch by Elio at the back! £3

"A Very Kraftwerk Summer" by Christopher Hutsul. All hail the returning champion, our second set of A Very Kraftwerk Summer is very welcome. You know the score, this small wood veneer paper screenprinted cover'd book holds pictoral evidence of Kraftwerk letting their hair down with their young mucker. Printed in glorious white, black and red(!), summer fun includes football in the park, cloud spotting and cinema waching with a guest appearance from Devo. So necessary. £5

"Wunderkammer no. 1" by Nicholas De Genova. Another reeeestock. Super technical inked drawings of insects, mammals, mutant hybrids and all in between. Laid out in charts and sets of diagrams, a real piece! £5

"Lose #1" by Michael Deforge. You know we had to get Michael Deforge's Lose comic back in. Sample the above cover and page, see with your own eyes how immense it is. That's not even taking in the story, and the story too is killer. Comic book referencing and twisted autobiographical meanderings spliced with action packed scenes. Dis guy just keeps getting better! £4
"Lose #2" by Michael Deforge. See! He is getting better and he started off pretty damn good. This second issue is kinda standalone in it's own right, it reintroduces a couple of the same characters but the storylines don't carry over from the original. This is the horror comic! Deforge style! The first story follows two boys (mis)fortunes as they find a severed horse head in the woods. This is GREAT! £4

Koyama Press. Done. Today I got an eagerly awaited parcel of books and zines from Blaise Larmee, Portland Oregon based genius youth comic artist and zinesmith. I have just two copies of the incredible "Young Lions" below...

It's Blaise's debut graphic novella and as you can see it demonstrates some pretty wonderful pencilmanship and conversational skill. That's understating my feelings about this book, it's incred. You need to pick this up. £8. Blaise also sent copies of "Katie Holmes Death Row" (£1) and "Comics Youth #1" (£2), an comics interview zine edited by Larmee with gmail chat and phone conversation transcripts with his comic contempories. It's the opposite of a dull read.

Below are the latest drop-offs from Malcy Duff, the wildman of Edinburgh. The first is "The Caddy", Malcy's latest book...

Cats under cars based antics depicted and paced out in Duff's trademark stark/hi-detail pen rendered style with sporadic text. I'm rubbish at describing Duff's books but I could look at them for ages. Screenprinted cover, edition of 100. £4

"4th 4th Bridge" by Malcy Duff. Hairdresser cave drawings open the book and sandwich enlargement/reduction rumination closes it. Everything that falls either side of this, and including this, is as strange. And as good. £3

"The Blackest Gnome" by Malcy Duff. Restock of one of my favourite of Malcy's comics, Blackest Gnome comes from around 2007 and follows a black and white minstrel show in a white transit van stuck in a traffic jam...to paraphrase Duff's description. All those things go on. Highly detailed repetition and pattern spring throughout, fascinating to take your time reading through. £4

The almost-too aptly named Anthony Zinonos sent an awesomely packed package from Norwich last week. Below is what goes on...

"DIY Collage Kit" by Anthony Zinonos. Expertly hand-picked collage material packs, each one individual. Some include slides, stamps, labels, photographs, stickers, raffle tickets and a whole load you can't see from the outside of the packet. It's a lucky dip but there doesn't look to be any duds! £5
"The Blue Bits" by Anthony Zinonos. Hand cut and stuck "blue bits", strategically placed by Zinonos on black and white photos. Highly pleasing! £3.50

"Le Dot" by Anthony Zinonos. Orange sticker fun from Zinonos, here the stickers augment the white space surrounding the people and scenes to make compositional funnies and perfections. As with "The Blue Bits", each one given the nature of the stick, is an individual. £2.50

"Red, Yellow, Blue, Repeat" by Anthony Zinonos. Zinonos goes back to primary school with his repetitive use of red, yellow and blue. No stuck on effects here, in it's place is a lovely gloss spot printing on matt paper that makes the clever use of the colours on each page really shine out. £4.50

The other weekend at Sounds from the Other City, I saw Girl Mountain play and then saw his comics he had for sale. I'd previously seen these comics online and had longed to get hold of them. I thought he lived in America but turns out he's Australian but he currently lives in London, I took all the comics he had. Above are examples of the covers and insides. Most feature his Megg and Mogg characters, a witch and cat that have many stone-based living room adventures. There's also an anthology comic that features drawings of burgers by Phil Elverum. Girl Mountain's comics are amusing! And they're drawn in a dainty way too, possibly because they're black and white copied from colour originals so you sense the soft colour tones. Prices of the four different comics range from £3-£5